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Fragile States

Although the phenomenon of state failure is not new, it has become much more relevant and worrying than ever before. In less interconnected eras, state weakness could be isolated and kept distant. Failure had fewer implications for peace and security. Now, within a more interconnected global community these fragile states pose dangers not only to themselves and their neighbors but also to peoples around the globe. Preventing states from failing, and resuscitating those that do fail, are thus strategic and global imperatives. CIC has provided research in this arena, developed panel dicussions that have explored critical issues confronting failed states. CIC has also drawn on expertise from the practitioner, NGO, academic and UN communities, provided candid recommendations and potential solutions to the global threat that failed states present.

Last week had no shortage of shocking images to illustrate our collective paralysis in the face of the Mediterranean refugee crisis. A three year old boy dead on a beach, waves lapping around his shoes. Thousands of forcibly displaced people marching through the heart of Europe watched by silent onlookers. Borders going back up in Schengen under the guise of traffic control and migrant searches.

This policy monitoring brief analyzes the process that led to the “Somali New Deal Compact,” the framework’s potential effectiveness as a peacebuilding tool, and potential ways to strengthen it. We find that the New Deal Compact in Somalia appears to have created a paradigm shift in international policy rhetoric around Somali ownership and leadership. However, the process to develop the Compact has also revealed a series of difficult trade-offs (related to process, risk, and implementation) between political and technical imperatives for both Somali and external actors.

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As the displacement of Syrians and other refugees in Turkey becomes increasingly protracted with no quick solution to the conflict in Syria in sight, overstretching the resources and capacities for the refugee response to its limits, formulating strategies and solutions to address the medium to long-term needs of refugees and host communities becomes increasingly vital.